November 18, 2025
Cultural heritage conservators, museum professionals, and archaeologists face a unique corrosion testing dilemma: traditional salt spray testers are too harsh for fragile, irreplaceable artifacts. A 2,000-year-old bronze vessel, a 19th-century iron railroad lantern, or a centuries-old coastal fortress’s metal fixtures—these items can’t withstand aggressive salt solutions, high-pressure fog, or prolonged exposure without suffering irreversible damage. Yet conservators still need accurate corrosion data to develop preservation strategies, assess degradation risks, and validate restoration treatments. Traditional testers force a devastating choice: skip critical testing and risk improper conservation, or run tests that harm the very artifacts they’re trying to protect.
The HeritagePreserve Corr Salt Spray Tester—launched by TOBO GROUP, a leader in specialized conservation testing solutions—reinvents corrosion testing for cultural heritage. Built with the delicate nature of artifacts in mind, it combines ultra-gentle testing protocols, customizable historical environment simulation, and non-destructive monitoring to deliver actionable corrosion insights without damaging priceless pieces. It’s not just a tester; it’s a conservation partner that balances scientific rigor with the care and respect cultural heritage demands.
Take the case of a regional museum preparing to restore a set of 1850s iron cannons recovered from a sunken ship. The cannons were covered in fragile encrustations and partial rust layers, and the conservation team needed to test how different rust stabilizers would perform under saltwater exposure (to mimic their original marine environment). A traditional salt spray tester would have used a 5% NaCl solution and high-pressure fog, which would have stripped the delicate encrustations and accelerated corrosion. The HeritagePreserve Corr, however, offered a Micro-Fog Gentle Mode—delivering ultra-fine (10–15μm) fog droplets at low pressure (0.05MPa) and a diluted, pH-neutral salt solution (1% NaCl, matching the shipwreck’s historical seawater composition). The team ran a 48-hour test on small, non-invasive samples taken from the cannons’ non-visible areas, monitoring corrosion progression via the tester’s built-in low-magnification (100x) optical camera—no physical contact, no damage to the original artifact. “The results told us exactly which stabilizer would prevent further rusting without harming the cannons’ historical patina,” says the museum’s lead conservator. “We never could have done that with a standard tester—we would have lost critical historical detail.”
The HeritagePreserve Corr also includes features tailored to conservation workflows, such as a Sample Archive System that stores test data, images, and historical context for each artifact (e.g., “Artifact ID: Bronze Vessel #789—Tested 2024-05-10, Historical Context: Han Dynasty, Coastal Burial Site”). This ensures full traceability for museum records and academic publications, a critical requirement for cultural heritage work. It also uses non-reactive, acid-free materials in the chamber (glass-lined walls, Teflon fixtures) to prevent chemical interactions with artifacts, and its salt solutions are filtered to remove impurities that could cause unexpected reactions with ancient metals or organic coatings (e.g., original paint on iron artifacts).
“Cultural heritage artifacts are irreplaceable—they tell our shared history, and we can’t afford to damage them in the name of testing,” says TOBO GROUP’s Conservation Testing Lead. “HeritagePreserve Corr was built on the understanding that conservation testing needs to be as gentle as it is accurate. It lets conservators and archaeologists do their work with confidence, knowing they’re protecting the past while using the best scientific tools available.”
The system complies with specialized conservation standards including ASTM G143 (standard practice for evaluating non-destructive corrosion monitoring techniques) and ICOM-CC (International Council of Museums Committee for Conservation) guidelines for artifact testing. It also offers custom training sessions for conservation teams, ensuring they can leverage the tester’s features without compromising artifact safety.
For more information about how the HeritagePreserve Corr can support your cultural heritage conservation projects—including custom historical environment profiles, non-destructive testing capabilities, and artifact-specific case studies—visit Info@botomachine.com.
